When you manage people, you are responsible for inspiring, motivating, and encouraging them. I think this is the language of a good manager:
1. What do you think?
2. How can I help?
3. I trust you
4. I am proud of you
5. Your work matters
6. I appreciate you
After you ask a question, be silent and listen for their answer.
⁃ Active listening means you’re concentrating on their response, making direct eye contact, and taking notes.
⁃ Are you paying attention to nonverbal cues?
⁃ What’s not being said is usually more important than what is said.
⁃ Keep it positive and focus on what can be done, not what can’t be done.
Critical thinking is the ability and eagerness to identify gaps in logic or shortfalls in evidence-based argumentation. Sympathetic listening is that commitment to understanding the argument from the other person’s perspective. For example: “Am I really understanding this or that from the other person’s point of view?”
Now what sympathy means in these cases is I am willing to set aside, even if it’s just temporarily, that hunt for the slightest mistake in logic or reasoning. Setting that aside for a moment, so that you can listen really carefully to what your conversation partner is saying, so you can understand from their perspective what their intellectual project is or why it is that they are looking at the same world you are looking at but coming to a very, very different conclusion. I think critical thinking and sympathetic listening are both facets of a great conversation.
Why are these skills important?
1. Communication
I think communication is all about sharing thoughts, ideas, and questions. Communication can come in many it’s not just speaking verbally as non-verbal cues such as hand gestures and facial expressions are just as important. And nowadays, as we live in a digital world, it is also important to learn how to responsibly navigate digital spaces.
2. Collaboration
I think the ability to collaborate and work together to reach a common goal is a skill worth practicing. Problem solving and tackling issues in which are bigger is essential if you want a career in any field.
3. Critical Thinking
I think by looking at problems in a new way and simply asking “Why?” in today’s world where we can get information at the click of a button, a large part of critical thinking is being able to look at information and decide if it is credible or not.
4. Creativity
I think being creative is trying new approaches to solve problems by simply thinking outside the box in any area. Creativity can be taught and fostered by encouraging your team to try new things and by creating a safe space for them to express themselves.
I wrote it down, put a date on it, listed the obstacles I had to overcome, identified the people, the groups, the organisations I needed to work with, spelled out a plan of action, set that time limit in there, and identified all the benefits to me. It was only when I did that, that the goal became a reality.
“If you want to achieve your goals, help others achieve their goals.”
Liz Fosslien ©
I’m in Napoli with my men’s club.
We are Flaneurs and we carried a set of rich associations: the men of leisure, the idlers, the urban explorers, the connoisseur of the street.
How creative do you think you are?
Creativity comes from inside and I believe that having the ability to think out of the box and experiment with things is the engine of achievement. We live on the fruits of rationalism and curiosity is the fuel to keep us awake and aware. I think that when you are creative, you will be able to turn new and imaginative ideas into reality.
F.E.A.R. is an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real”.
There's no true threat of immediate physical danger, no threat of a loss of someone or something dear to us, actually nothing there at all. F.E.A.R. is an illusion. Something we fabricate in our own minds and pretend is real. Fear is something normal, your reaction to fear tells you who you are…
1. Don’t be overheard complaining...even to yourself
2. Don’t speak more than you listen
3. Don’t tie your identity to your possessions
4. Don’t compare yourself to others
5. Don’t suffer imagined troubles
6. Don't judge others
7. Don’t be all about business
“If you’re good at something never, do it for free.”
It’s a real shame as the focus is on the slapping incident at the Oscars and not on Will Smith’s excellent performance as “King Richard” or Questlove’s wonderful documentary, “Summer of Soul”.
“Everyone agrees with free speech until they hear something they don’t like.”
I won the birthday lottery and was privileged to being born in South London and to have Jamaican parents. I grew up thinking that it was normal to contribute in some way, whether it was by direct economic contribution, social presence or giving food and drink. It was expected of me to be part of something to make “something” better and this energy made it easy for other people to act on it. Character is not something that you buy; it is not a commodity that can be bartered for; it is not a quality suited for only the rich and famous; rather, character is built upon the foundational commitment of love, honesty, and compassion for others.
What happens when you give everyone a microphone?
There will be a lot of noise out there.
In the past when we had a gatekeeper who chose who had a microphone was both good and bad. It was bad because it silenced voices immediately and it was good because it kept microphones away from people who wanted to tear things down. When I think about what is on offer from the social media networks, it’s really important to decode this and understand that we are not their customers, we are their products. We do not pay to use any social media platforms and these companies (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are selling us and our data to someone else and have created a regime where they make us feel bad all day and the only way to feel less bad is to click something. That’s the cycle they have built and the problem with that cycle and the easily measured metrics of how many followers you have, pushes people to be purist, it pushes people to be angry and it pushes people to tear folks down.
The phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads” basically means that the media loves violence. In other words, if a story involves a brutal death or injury of some kind (or the likelihood of it), it is likely to get higher ratings.
What are the changes we seek to make, in order to become the type of person we want to be?
There are a series of choices we have to make, and I think these choices are easier if we have habits. Habits get us results; goals are results! Having a goal that you are going to for example, go to lose weight does not tell me anything. Whereas having the goal to go to the gym every other day for 6 months and you are going to get as fit as a fiddle is a way more specific goal and is totally in your control.
Do you consistently ask yourself the question, “What am I doing that someone else can do just as well?” Don't let others define what “success” is for you. Once you have defined your idea of success, commit yourself to doing all the great things you can do to achieve it.
Here’s a few factors of success:
1. Purpose
2. Vision
3. Goals
4. Choices
5. Reasons
6. Environment
7. Attitude
8. Time
9. Energy
10. Results
We live in a society where we spend so much time doing, we fail to take time to celebrate and acknowledge the things that we have done. As you may know, I have spent a great deal of my career in the lifestyle industry, and I think fashion can be a brilliant mirror of the moment.
Last night I attended the world premiere of “The Chocolate Wars” in Copenhagen. The film director, Miki Mistrati is an old friend of mine who currently lives in London and the film highlights the modern-day slave trade issues in the manufacturing of chocolate. The fact of the matter is we live in a society where profit and growth are the key performance indicators, and I have posed this question many times before: Can we have both sustainability (ethical sourcing of materials, paying a fair wage throughout the supply chain, etc.) and economic growth?
Price has always been one of the deciding factors for making purchasing decisions. Nowadays consumers are more willing to shop around the internet for “cheaper” prices across retailers and marketplaces rather than going directly to the brands website. I think in the world of algorithms, hashtags and followers, it’s important to understand the true importance of human behaviour.
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Packman c/o Nintendo
Some people see the thing that they want, and some people see the things that prevent them from getting what they want. Let’s play a game and the rules are that you can go after anything you want, but you cannot deny anyone else going after anything they want. You don’t have to play the game the way everyone else has done it, you can play it your own way, you can break the rules, you just can’t get in the way of someone else getting what they want.
“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy”
Image c/o Liz Fosslien ©
I think that when you place a milestone in the path to action, it is more likely that people will complete that action. Truly skilled consultants and coaches start by asking themselves:
1) How can I shorten my clients’ path to their desired outcome?
2) How can I accelerate my clients’ speed to getting big results?
Contact me via e-mail for a discovery meeting.
As a coach, I can help your team to clarify these basic questions:
What do you see as your fundamental task and goals?
Who are your most important customers, users, and stakeholders?
What are their main needs?
And then I would continue on the development track with these questions:
In which areas do you see the need for you to develop your practice?
What areas of competence do you want to develop in yourself?
What types of tasks do you have the courage to embark on in the long term?
The products are extremely good, but Apple doesn’t make the best computers or telephones by any stretch of the imagination, but they sell because people associate an aspirational identity with their products and the desire goes through the roof. There’s no mention of screen resolution, memory or how many gigabytes and that’s because it doesn’t matter. It’s all about what’s inside the box, and you just have to have one as people buy into something that is deeply felt, and that is identity.
“Design is a funny word. Some people think that design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Steve Jobs and think it’s not so much the aesthetics as it is about the mechanics. Now when you apply that thinking to Apple, then you can really see how this makes sense.
